I started reading about the Cinch! diet and it sounded promising. The author is a nutritionist who worked for Prevention magazine and was a co-author of The Flat Belly diet. So I bought the ebook.

Basically, the diet highly recommends a plant based diet but is flexible for meat/egg/dairy eaters although she institutes a requirement that vegan meals be part of those that are omnivores on the diet.

I think for me, I tend to do better when I'm told what to eat and use servings rather than counting points/calories. There are recipes in the book that include meat/dairy/egg but most of them easy to swap out substitutes (ie black beans or tofu for chicken). She also includes vegan recipes.

So has anyone heard of this? looked at it?

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

It appears to be popular. All of the copies in my library system are out and there are active requests for the book.

_________________A whole lot of access and privilege goes into being sanctimonious pricks J-DubDessert is currently a big bowl of sanctimonious, passive aggressive vegan enduced boak. FezzaYou people are way less funny than Pandacookie. Sucks to be you.-interrobang?!

I'm almost done reading the book, near the end she mentions she is vegan. I figured she was but wasn't sure.

There are 2 parts of the plan, a 5 day fast forward and the core which I mention above. The fast forward includes no grains. She says the fast forward is optional. Anyway, I've been doing the fast forward and I'd say I'm pretty happy with the results in terms of how I feel and also how my clothes fit.

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

If you want to avoid soy, then I'd avoid the fast forward and start with the main plan. I've been using tofu but it is a fairly small amount and I bought coconut yogurt instead of soy yogurt.

I normally eat soy once or twice/month so eating soy in the form of tofu everyday is a bit odd. It has been fine though and tomorrow, I'll go back to my eating soy rarely.

Also, I'm not sure if she dairy was healthy or if she said yogurt was? I think she is trying to reach mass appeal. In the book, she talks about yogurt being healthy but that is because of the probiotics. She also talks about dangers of mercury in fish, what types of fish to eat if you eat fish, etc and I'm not sure if saying fish was healthy was meant for meat eaters? Compared to other types of meat, fish is probably the healthiest.

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

I'm almost done reading the book, near the end she mentions she is vegan. I figured she was but wasn't sure.

There are 2 parts of the plan, a 5 day fast forward and the core which I mention above. The fast forward includes no grains. She says the fast forward is optional. Anyway, I've been doing the fast forward and I'd say I'm pretty happy with the results in terms of how I feel and also how my clothes fit.

The fast forward is what I need. I'm in a carb and sugar downward spiral. I came home from work today and ate pretzels and a chocolate bar.

What are the meals like? I'm hoping to start this week but may have to wait until payday if I need a lot of groceries.

_________________~Sweet songs the youth, the wise, the meeting of all wisdom. To believe in the good in man.

For the fast forward, you only eat 5 things. I had all the stuff at home except coconut yogurt.

The five things are: spinach, raspberries (or blueberries), tofu, almonds and yogurt (soy or coconut). For the tofu, it took me 3 days to eat a container of tofu between the various meals. You are also allowed to use various spices, various vinegars and some 100% citrus juice/wedges. Also, I imagine why beans aren't included in the fast forward is because you are eating a limited choice of foods so she probably wants you to eat tofu to get the maximum amount of nutrition. I imagine though that you could sub tofu for beans in some of the meals if you really wanted to limit soy. I don't normally eat a lot of soy so wasn't sure how I'd feel but honestly, I feel great.

Breakfast is a tofu scramble with spinach along with a side of raspberries and almonds. but I hate eating something hot in the morning so I made baked tofu and a spinach/blueberry shake and a few almonds.

Lunch is yogurt parfait with yogurt, raspberries and sliced or slivered almonds (or a few whole if you prefer). I actually fell in love with this because I used frozen berries and it was like ice cream. So good.

Snack is salad with spinach, raspberries, tofu and almonds. I really liked this salad as well and liked the baked tofu for it too. The last couple days I kind of just crumbled up the tofu with some lemon juice and balsamic vinegar and put in the salad. I also enjoyed using slivered almonds.

Dinner is a yogurt shake with almond butter and raspberries. For this one, I basically repeated lunch except I mixed the almond butter with the yogurt then added frozen berries and put it in the fridge to let the berries defrost while they partially froze the yogurt.

For tomorrow, my first real day, I'm doing a chocolate ginger pear smoothie with a piece of ezekiel toast for breakfast, lunch is a bit of a stretch because I'm eating v'con moussaka with veggies on the side, then my snack is yogurt mixed with berries, oats and slivered almonds. For dinner, I plan to have veggie/bean tacos.

(And I say moussaka is a bit of a stretch because potatoes are allowed in limited quantities but can be used in place of a grain)

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

I wonder if I'd do better with a very specific "eat this" diet for awhile. I've been trying to to ETL but its a lot easier to stick to when doing it with someone like I did last time. Well, that and I've been on a bunch of dates so we've gone out to eat a couple times. I've not been too successful this time for sure!

But at least the person I've been dating seems to now be more interested in staying in a cooking dinner so maybe it will be easier, but there are lots of places in Asheville I've wanted to go try out and I've finally got someone to go with! so, conundrum. But anyway, I kinda want to do a "this is what you eat" diet.

_________________Evolved a vascular system, so I went from bryophyte to lycophyte.

I like Eat to Live a lot but I struggle because even though I love veggies, some days I don't want to eat a pound of cooked veggies and other days I don't want to eat a pound of raw veggies. Also I guess Eat to Live really says to eat 3 meals/day with no snacking. That doesn't quite work for me because I workout after work so to go through lunch, workout and get to dinner, it is at least 7 hours without eating.

This works well for me because I eat breakfast when I wake up and know exactly which components need to be in breakfast, I go to work, eat lunch 4 or 5 hours later. Eat a snack about 4 or 5 hours later, go to my gym, go home and it is 4-5 hours after my snack so it is time for dinner. Then if I want a treat, I got chocolate :)

_________________You are all a disgrace to vegans. Go f*ck yourselves, especially linanil.

I will have the book in my hands when I get home tonight (provided I get there before 5:30...and since I forgot my gym bag today that is possible!)I'll have to wait to start the fast forward until the Lasagna I made is all gone though.

_________________~Sweet songs the youth, the wise, the meeting of all wisdom. To believe in the good in man.